Hidden History of Sturgeon Bay

By Heidi Hodges and Kathy Steebs

Beyond the stunning beauty of Wisconsin's Sturgeon Bay lies a hidden past of colorful characters, tragic shipwrecks and compelling community achievements.

Arriving as an immigrant to the town, Joseph Harris Sr. became a founding father, creating the Door County Advocate newspaper and leading a campaign to construct the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal. More than one hundred local volunteers formed the ranks of Company F, nicknamed Les Terribles by the French for their bravery and sacrifice in World War I. After surviving the Civil War, former slave Peter Custis endured unimaginable tragedy while forging a life in the city.

Authors Heidi Hodges and Kathy Steebs expose the forgotten history of Sturgeon Bay. It's a story of dogged perseverance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781439664797

Heidi Hodges

"Heidi grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, but spent family vacations in Door County, at Peninsula State Park, at Gills Rock and at a little log cabin south of Sturgeon Bay. She received a BA in technical communication from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville in 1988, focusing on photography and journalism. To complete her major, she interned at the Door County Advocate in 1987 and '88. She remained at the Advocate for thirteen years after the internship, until leaving to start her own photography and freelance writing business in 2001. In 2009, she won a National Newspaper Award for a special-issue magazine she spearheaded, Taking Flight, chronicling her journey through breast cancer. In 2013, she was named editor of the Door County Magazine, where she continues today, working her "dream job" of highlighting this place she's loved all her life. Heidi lives in Sturgeon Bay with her two sons, Fred and Gordon, surrounded by family, friends and lots of beautiful water."

Book preview

Author

PREFACE

We imagine Keta Steebs and Chan Harris would be pleased. Chan Harris was the longtime owner and editor of the Door County Advocate. And Keta was a star reporter on staff.

The staff of the paper was tight—like family. When I joined in 1987, the Advocate had expanded from the original triumvirate of Chan, Jim Robertson and Doug Larson to a full newsroom, advertising department and production crew. In the 1950s, those three and their support staff led the paper out of some very bleak days following the murder of Chan’s parents. Each addition to the staff was warmly welcomed in.

I came on the scene in 1987 as the Resorter Reporter photography intern, taking photos for a special summer section aimed at promoting tourist activities around the county. I shot pictures of the festivals and fun activities and wrote a weekly column.

Chan was the editor who hired me for this dream position, but I came to regard him as almost a grandfather—a grandfather who had the uncanny ability to spot, at a glance, every spelling or grammatical error I made.

Brash, funny Keta worked at a desk in the corner, wearing her trademark wig and smoking cigarettes as she typed away at her stories—hard-hitting news pieces that often ruffled feathers. She also churned out feature stories and kindly profiles at a steady rate. She was well known in the county and far beyond.

She quickly recognized my youthful eagerness with my new job and took me under her wing. Chan educated me, Keta supported me and the rest of the staff adopted me. In 1989, I was officially hired as a full-time staffer.

Kathy and I—coauthors of this book you are holding—met at a dinner party Keta held at her home in the late ’80s. Kathy was with her future husband, Keta’s son Scott. It was a great evening with food and wine and laughter. More party than dinner—it was Keta’s style.

Kathy and Scott moved to Milwaukee, where Scott worked as a teacher and Kathy as a technical writer. Our paths occasionally crossed.

In 2000, Scott and Kathy moved back to Door County. As the years progressed, Kathy and I became great friends and enjoyed a number of fun coincidences: we share the same birthday and year. Our sons are the same age. We ended up working together with the Door County Magazine—which is under the umbrella of the Advocate.

And we are neighbors.

We have both been very keen on learning about and researching local history, so it seemed perfect that we would team up to write this book.

Chan Harris died in 1998 and Keta Steebs in 2013. While we miss them terribly, we feel they would be awfully proud of our efforts with this book. Both Keta and Chan were ardent supporters of Door County and Sturgeon Bay.

There were so many stories to tell, it was hard to pick. Sturgeon Bay provided us a deep well to draw from. Were there more on our list? Oh, yes, but these were the ones that called to us, the ones that felt more hidden in our history.

We have a lot of folks we want to thank for their help in researching the stories and their contributions to the illustrations: Dr. Victoria Tashjian, Tamara Thomsen, Nyla Small, Susie Woldt, Tom and Kathy Anschutz, June Larson, Nancy Aten, Scott Steebs and Wil Steebs. We are indebted to the Door County Maritime Museum, the National Archives in Chicago and the Door County Historical Museum.

We want to thank the Door County Magazine and Gannett for allowing us to repurpose several stories that originally ran in different issues of the magazine.

And we want to thank our family and friends, who have let us put in the hours needed to complete this work. These stories need to be told and remembered, to keep our little city’s history alive.

And, of course, we want to thank Chan and Keta.

Because without them, our paths would have been quite different.

PART I

PEOPLE

The Character of Sturgeon Bay

BERTHA FALK

Widowed Immigrant Finds a New Life

Bertha Helena Falk was out of options. It was the mid-1800s, and her homeland of Norway could no longer produce enough food to feed its growing population. Her husband, Jorgen, a fisherman, had been lost at sea. With four children under the age of ten to feed and few opportunities for employment, Bertha made a drastic decision.

Joining the ranks of approximately one-third of her fellow Norwegians who left their homeland in search of a better life, Bertha and her children fled. They boarded the schooner Ebenezer and set sail for America.

The Ebenezer was one of Norway’s smallest emigrant sailing vessels—capable of carrying only seventy-five passengers. Steerage accommodations meant Bertha had to bring her own food and cooking utensils and stand in line at the galley every day, waiting for her turn to cook.

Accommodations were tight; she and her children shared sleeping quarters with all but three passengers. (Only one family aboard the Ebenezer could afford a cabin.) The Falks likely shared a family bunk, built of rough boards, outfitted with straw bedding and located between the upper deck and the cargo hold. Considering the accommodations, it was likely a rolling cesspool of seasickness, frustration and fear.

But what was ahead would hopefully be better than what was left behind.

SETTLING A NEW COMMUNITY

Despite her compelling story, Bertha is not a well-known Door County settler. There are no parks or roads named for her. No surviving letters or diaries exist detailing her life. Even though she was one of the first white female settlers, early Door County historians Charles I. Martin and Hjalmar R. Holand barely mention her.

Perhaps this is because men were the stars of most each and every story. Women were incidental. Early Door County newspapers kept to this standard as well—with women featured only in marriage announcements, obituaries, church picnic recaps and stories about socializing with relatives. Had it not been for a 1928 Green Bay Gazette article written about her son John, Bertha’s story would have died with her.

According to the article, Bertha’s young family was traveling to the new country as part of a larger group that included nine others who also made the arduous journey from Stavanger, Norway, to Green Bay.

A passenger list for the schooner Ebenezer reveals this voyage also included Door County settlers Salvi and Marthe Salvison—later anglicized to Solway—and the Wathne family (Zacharias, Gabriel and Malene), who, according to Holand’s History of Door County, Wisconsin, then traveled from Green Bay to Door County with the Reverend A.M. Iverson, founder of the Moravian congregation in Ephraim. It is likely that Bertha and her family were part of this group of pioneer Norwegian Moravians.

The Moravians originally planned to settle in the Green Bay area, but in 1852, they decided to search for land on the Door Peninsula instead. Four members of their group, including Salvi Solway and Louis Klinkenberg, chose to settle in the vicinity of Sturgeon Bay rather than follow the rest of the congregation to Ephraim.

At that time, according to the article, Bertha’s eight-year-old son, John, accompanied Louis Klinkenberg to the site of what is now Sturgeon Bay, where they found nobody but Indians.

Hardship quickly found the group of settlers. Even though the early historical writings do not usually mention wives and children by name, we know from Charles Martin’s The History of Door County, that Salvi Solway’s wife, Marthe, died soon after arriving in Door County and was the first white woman buried in Sturgeon Bay.

STARTING OVER AGAIN

In the 1850s, homesteading in Door County meant clearing the land of timber and building log cabins with materials at hand. Everyday supplies could only be purchased in the more settled area of Green Bay, and the only way to travel there was via boat or on foot. Roughing it was a part of everyday life.

The Preemption Act of 1841 allowed pioneer squatters to purchase public lands from the U.S. government before it was offered for public sale. To qualify, the squatter had to be the head of household—a man over the age of twenty-one or a widow—a citizen of the United States or intending to become naturalized. Hopefuls also had to reside on the property for at least fourteen months, continually making improvements.

Yet almost as soon as the widowed Bertha settled on her new homestead, she lost it to a Mr. Crandall.

Illustration of Bertha Falk dismantling her cabin after her land was preempted. Illustration by Susie Woldt. Courtesy of Door County Magazine.

Bertha’s second husband, Salvi (Solway) Salvison’s headstone at Bayside Cemetery in Sturgeon Bay. Courtesy of Heidi Hodges.

Bertha Falk Solway’s headstone at Bayside Cemetery in Sturgeon Bay. Courtesy of Heidi Hodges.

Evidently, this Crandall was able to jump her claim before Bertha could prove she met all of the preemption qualifications. It is easy to imagine this single, immigrant mother at the end of her rope. Perhaps angry and unwilling to concede any more, the plucky matriarch tore down her cabin and sailed it up the bay to another piece of land in what is now Sevastopol.

But that isn’t the end of Bertha’s story.

Both Holand and Martin